3 Inspectors Faced Charges Once Before

By ROBERT F. WORTH

Published: June 27, 2002

Three of the 19 present and former plumbing inspectors who were charged this week with extorting payoffs from New York contractors had been indicted and cleared of the same crimes nearly a decade ago, records show.

In a reminder of the seemingly ingrained culture of corruption that has plagued the City Buildings Department, the criminal complaints unsealed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Tuesday proved to be remarkably similar to those announced in 1993 by the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau.

In both cases, the inspectors, who review plumbing work on commercial construction projects as well as home renovations, were accused of extorting cash bribes in exchange for approvals. Three men, including the chief plumbing inspector in Brooklyn, returned to their old inspecting jobs after the acquittal in 1995.

A day after the new arrests, details of the lives of the men at the center of New York City's latest bribes-for-approval scandal began to emerge. Most appeared to live in modest middle-class homes. One was an amateur golfing champion. Another had been sued for failing to pay up after contracting to buy a plumbing company.

Some of their friends and relatives seemed shocked by the accusations; others sounded resigned.

''It's not surprising,'' said Karen Truc about the news that her father, Joseph Truc, was among those charged Tuesday. She added that he had been a good grandfather to her two children.

Few of the inspectors could be reached for comment yesterday.

Records show that George Friedlander, the chief inspector for Brooklyn and one of the three inspectors who was charged in 1993, filed for bankruptcy in 1987 after being sued by another plumber. According to a lawyer who represented the other side in the suit, Mr. Friedlander had refused to supply the money in his purchase of a plumbing business. The case was settled before trial. Mr. Friedlander lives in a single-family house on Ridgewood Avenue in Staten Island valued at $248,000, records show.

Henry Brace, a friend of Sam Caravello's, who was the chief plumbing inspector for Manhattan until he was charged Tuesday, said Mr. Caravello was ''a clean guy.'' Standing outside the apartment building on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn where Mr. Caravello lived until recently, Mr. Brace said, ''He'll pull through this -- unless they got him on tape.''

Carrol Muccio, whose husband Neale Muccio was the chief plumbing inspector in the city and the most senior of those arrested Tuesday, said the charges were a complete surprise. ''He never took any bribes,'' she said outside the couple's home in Midwood, Brooklyn.

Mr. Friedlander and two other men charged Tuesday, Thomas J. DeGoski and Vernon Giles Jr., were city plumbing inspectors in 1993 when they and 20 other active and retired inspectors were charged with taking bribes from contractors.

A Manhattan jury cleared Mr. Friedlander of the charges after a 10-day trial in March 1995. The record on the other two men is sealed, indicating that they were almost certainly acquitted. They have since retired. A woman who answered the phone yesterday at Mr. DeGoski's residence in Bayside, Queens, said he had been tried and acquitted. Neighbors said he had lived there for decades, and one recalled him protesting his innocence to the earlier charges.

Calls to lawyers for Mr. Friedlander and Mr. DeGoski were not returned yesterday. A call to Mr. Giles, who has been charged but not arrested, was not returned.

After the trials in 1995, the men returned to their jobs as plumbing inspectors at the Buildings Department. A department official who declined to be identified said yesterday that efforts to investigate the men after they returned were unsuccessful because possible witnesses refused to cooperate.

Building contractors around the city offered varying reactions yesterday to the arrests.

''I don't find it surprising in that they're so understaffed in all the building departments,'' said Jay Koven, president of Ambassador Construction. ''I think these problems are inevitable until they fix the core problem, which is to hire adequate staff and supervision.''

Buildings Department officials met with members of the plumbing industry yesterday to assure them that there would be adequate staff to continue making plumbing inspections. Stewart D. O'Brien, the executive director of the Plumbing Foundation of the City of New York, a trade group, sent a letter to members yesterday saying that despite emergency training measures, there were likely to be shortages.

Patricia J. Lancaster, the city buildings commissioner, said the department's biggest problem was recruitment. ''We don't pay anywhere what the industry does,'' she said, adding that the department has not filled the ranks of elevator inspectors reduced by indictments several years ago.